This is Dating Wall Gray, the grown-ups guide to love sex and relationships.

I'm Laura Stasi.

Recently, I've had a slew of love-related books come across my desk, including two that I find particularly intriguing.

I'm talking with the authors in today's episode,

another dating point of view. Let's get right to it.

I'm U.S.U. And I'm Julie Kraft-Chic. And we're the co-host of the Datable Podcast and co-authors of the book How to Be Datable. May I ask how old each of you is? Yeah, I'm 44 and I'm 41. So I was coming at dating basically for the first time at age 55. And I didn't have much experience

it within the first place. So I thought it was really hard. But after reading your book, I think now that

it wasn't necessarily my age that makes dating hard. Is dating hard? Yes. I think everyone tends to go to their

own circumstance of why dating is hard, but universally there's stats that dating is harder than

ever before. Pew Research has come out with studies around how in the last 10 years, dating has never been this difficult

and 50% of people are giving up or feeling like it's not worth dating or even pursuing a romantic

relationship. I'm actually curious to hear from you, Laura. Why did you find dating hard? What was the

hard part for you? What I feel like now is I think it was hard because I was

basically thinking, okay, you find someone you're attracted to them, you fall in love and you get

married, the end. I was basically thinking at the time, which I didn't realize at the time,

I'm going to just replicate what I had before.

It worked before. Why doesn't it work again? However, how many of us, of my generation anyway,

really thought about that person that we married in the first place? You know, you developed a crush

in high school or college or, you know, at the workplace.

And it was like, yeah, it seemed like the natural thing to do.

You got married.

But now it does feel like there are more options.

...